Breakdown of По выходным мне хочется завтракать не дома, а в маленьком кафе у метро.
Questions & Answers about По выходным мне хочется завтракать не дома, а в маленьком кафе у метро.
По выходным literally is “by/along weekends,” but idiomatically it means “on weekends / at weekends (habitually)”.
Grammar points:
по + dative plural is a standard pattern for repeated / habitual times:
- по утрам – in the mornings
- по вечерам – in the evenings
- по понедельникам – on Mondays
выходной (day off / weekend day) → dative plural: выходным.
So по выходным = “on weekends (as a regular thing).”
You’ll often see this form when someone talks about what they usually does at a certain time, not a one‑time event.
Both can be translated as “on the weekend(s)”, but there is a nuance:
по выходным
- Uses по + dative plural.
- Strongly suggests habit / regularity:
- По выходным я хожу в спортзал. – I (usually) go to the gym on weekends.
на выходных
- Uses на + prepositional plural.
- Can refer to a specific coming / past weekend or weekends in general:
- Что ты делал на выходных? – What did you do this weekend?
- На выходных мы часто ездим к бабушке. – On weekends we often go to grandma’s.
In your sentence, по выходным fits well because we’re talking about a general habit.
Both are possible, but they have different feel:
я хочу завтракать... – “I want to have breakfast…”
- Direct, more “strong-willed”: I want.
мне хочется завтракать... – literally “To me it feels like having breakfast…”
- Uses impersonal verb хочется with the person in the dative (мне).
- Sounds less direct, more like a spontaneous desire, mood, or craving:
- “I feel like having breakfast…”
- “I’m in the mood to have breakfast…”
In everyday speech, мне хочется often sounds softer and more natural for describing what you feel like doing, especially in casual contexts like food, leisure, etc.
Хочется is the impersonal form of the verb хотеть (to want).
- It looks like 3rd person singular, neuter: (ему) хочется.
- There is no grammatical subject; instead, the person who experiences the desire is in the dative:
- мне хочется – I feel like
- тебе хочется – you feel like
- ему / ей хочется – he / she feels like
The -ся ending marks it as an impersonal reflexive-like form. In practice, you learn it as a fixed pattern:
- мне хочется + infinitive / noun:
- мне хочется спать – I feel like sleeping
- мне хочется кофе – I feel like (having) coffee
Yes, in the right context you can:
- По выходным хочется завтракать не дома...
This is common when:
- It’s obvious we are talking about the speaker (like English “(I) feel like…” with “I” dropped in casual talk).
- Or when we mean people in general: “you/one/people feel like…”
But if you want to be explicit that it’s you who feels this way, мне is completely natural and clear:
По выходным мне хочется...
Here завтракать is an infinitive verb: “to have breakfast”.
- завтракать – to (have) breakfast, to eat breakfast (imperfective)
- завтрак – (the) breakfast (noun)
With хочется, Russian normally uses the infinitive to express wanting to do something:
- мне хочется завтракать – I feel like having breakfast (doing the action)
NOT: мне хочется завтрак (this is clumsy / wrong for this meaning).
So the structure is:
- мне хочется + verb (infinitive) = I feel like doing X.
Both are correct infinitives of “to have breakfast”, but they differ in aspect:
- завтракать – imperfective: focuses on the process / general activity.
- позавтракать – perfective: focuses on one complete act of breakfast.
In your sentence, we’re talking about a habitual activity on weekends, not one specific completed event, so the imperfective is natural:
- По выходным мне хочется завтракать... – On weekends I feel like having breakfast (as a general activity, repeatedly).
If you said:
- Сегодня утром мне захотелось позавтракать в кафе.
– This morning I felt like having (one) breakfast in a café.
That would be about a single, concrete event.
Russian distinguishes between:
- дома – an adverb: “at home”
- в доме – “in the house (building)”
In your sentence:
- не дома = “not at home” (not in my home environment)
- If you said не в доме, it would sound like you’re talking more about being inside a physical building as opposed to outside it, which isn’t the point here.
When you mean “at home” vs “out somewhere”, Russian uses:
- дома – at home
- не дома – not at home
Because of case:
With в to express location (where?), Russian uses the prepositional case:
- в доме – in the house
- в кафе – in the café
- в маленьком кафе – in a small café
маленький (small) in prepositional neuter singular becomes маленьком:
- nominative: маленькое кафе – a small café (subject / object)
- prepositional: в маленьком кафе – in a small café
So в маленьком кафе answers the question где? (where?), and that requires prepositional.
Кафе is one of those indeclinable neuter nouns in Russian:
- It looks the same in all cases and numbers:
- кафе (nom.)
- в кафе (prep.)
- из кафе (gen./prep.)
- к кафе (dat.)
- etc.
The adjective before it, however, does decline and shows the case clearly:
- маленькое кафе – nominative (a small café)
- в маленьком кафе – prepositional (in a small café)
- из маленького кафе – genitive (from a small café)
So you read the case mostly from маленьком / маленького, not from кафе.
У метро means “by the metro / near the metro station”.
Preposition у
- genitive is used for location near something:
- у дома – by the house / near the house
- у окна – by the window
- у школы – near the school
метро is another indeclinable neuter noun, but in form it looks the same; logically it’s in the genitive after у.
Contrast:
- в метро – in the metro (inside the subway system)
- у метро – near the metro (outside, close to the station)
So в маленьком кафе у метро = “in a small café near the metro (station).”
Russian word order is fairly flexible, but each order has a typical focus.
- По выходным мне хочется завтракать...
- Fronting По выходным highlights the time frame:
“As for weekends / On weekends, I feel like…”
- Fronting По выходным highlights the time frame:
You could say:
- Мне по выходным хочется завтракать не дома...
- Мне хочется по выходным завтракать не дома...
These are still correct, but slightly different in rhythm and emphasis. The original version is very natural because time expressions like по выходным often come at or near the beginning of the sentence.
Yes, that’s grammatically fine:
- По выходным я хочу завтракать не дома, а в маленьком кафе у метро.
Nuance:
- я хочу – a bit more direct and strong: “I want to…”
- мне хочется – softer, more about a feeling or mood: “I feel like…”
Both are commonly used. In casual conversation about preferences, мне хочется often sounds a bit more natural and less “insistent,” which fits well with talking about weekend moods.